abigail dym

How Not to Defeat Authoritarianism Moderation used to help Democrats win, but its advantages now have been greatly exaggerated.

This @bostonreview.bsky.social piece by @adambonica.bsky.social and @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social is an absolute must-read, as are many of the responses to it.

Spread this one far and wide.

omg the original post, not as the printout version (for ease of reading)

incredible opportunity in the politics of education!

If you are working on course design this week, and you teach a lot of students, let me recommend this guest post on my blog from three fantastic instructors who are pursuing innovative grading methods in their large lectures. It's a lot of work, but alternative grading can be done in big classes!

The Virginia Senate just told UVA it’s not getting state funding if it accepts the compact since UVA exists to serve Virginia, its residents, & their interests—not be a tool of the federal govt. Scoop from our student newspaper, who’ve been doing vital reporting www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2025...

“One way to fight a profit-driven system that treats people as disposable is to instead treat people as redeemable. Solidarity means not writing anyone off completely, not throwing anyone away. It holds out hope that systems & individuals can change."

Officially out in paperback as of yesterday.

Social Education September 2025

Should Project 2025 be required reading for high schoolers? In our new article, @abigailrd.bsky.social and I explore two ways for teachers to bring challenging texts into the classroom. www.socialstudies.org/social-educa...

Blue states should make democracy the prevailing theme of the upcoming school year. Not just civics/social studies classes, but democracy-reinforcing lessons & experiences integrated throughout the curriculum.

Boldly educate through the crisis, don't leave children in despair, teach a better way.

The Group Behind Project 2025 Has a Plan to Crush the Pro-Palestinian Movement

This is a must-read: The Trump administration's use of anti-semitism to attack immigrants and higher education mirrors plans by a group of Christian nationalists in the Heritage Foundation (which produced Project 2025). 🧵
www.nytimes.com/2025/05/18/u...

Moreover, these funds serve the public interest. Universities do things private companies with research capacities cannot: train research talent, conduct basic research with uncertain payoffs, and distribute knowledge as a public good. And the rewards have been enormous. Everything from the internet to pharmaceutical and health care innovations evolved from such investments. We are richer and healthier for the investment.

The trope that universities are "dependent" on the federal government fundamentally misunderstands how vital this partnership has been for the US. The private sector can't replace it. If we kill it, we're all worse off. From @donmoyn.bsky.social and me: donmoynihan.substack.com/p/are-univer...

Harvard Against the Authoritarian My Remarks on the Hands off Higher Education Rally

Fight fiercely, America

Really smart approach that I will adopt as well.

🚨🆕 In a new NBER working paper out today (tinyurl.com/2vv3vnhf), with
@wsandholtz.bsky.social we ask a 🔥question: Can controversial public policies end up being political successes even when they cause lots of backlash? And if the answer is yes, what drives pol success? A thread 👇

“The withholding of federal funds and the threat of withholding funds, without relevant and proper investigation into alleged violations or protections of due process, is a dangerous strategy used to discipline institutions of higher education for perceived political noncompliance."

Twenty Lessons, read by John Lithgow Key selections from On Tyranny, for viewing and sharing

Here is my best guidance for action, rendered beautifully by the great John Lithgow. I first published these lessons more than eight years ago, in late 2016. They open the twenty chapters of "On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century."
snyder.substack.com/p/twenty-les...

Paul Peterson on the importance of USED's data collection operation

Once, I was part of a team of four people at 18F that saved the Department of Defense $500 million with a single, three-day project. 18F projects saved many millions of dollars as a matter of course, while delivering better results for Americans. Another time I was part of a two-person team (our billing worked out to about half an FTE, as I recall) that partnered with a court for 18 months to help them build, from scratch, an open source case management system to drive the operations of the entire court. The whole thing cost them just a few million bucks, vastly less than they’d been spending on their old system, and today their cost of operating it is a rounding error compared to their old infrastructure costs. All the work 18F did for all their agency partners was open source. Public money should produce public software, for public inspection. In short, 18F works just how Musk and team pretend that they want government to work. But when his team found it, they destroyed it. 18F’s work is evidence that government works well, which undermines their message that it doesn’t. 18F’s parent agency, the U.S. General Services Administration, turns a profit as an agency. So it has to be destroyed too.

Most members of the public have little reason to be aware of 18F, or will understand what its loss signifies. So this post tries to capture that, by including the voices of those who worked there. First, from @waldo.net

House Rs just passed the budget resolution, the first step in their process to enact a bill that'd kick millions off Medicaid & cut SNAP down to just $1.60 per person per meal on avg while cutting taxes for the top 0.1% by $278k - all while increasing the debt

🧵on what's to come and WHERE TO FIGHT

There are no words that can adequately describe what losing ANES would mean

We’re focused on feeding our kids.

Investing in our schools.

Making sure child care is affordable.

Regardless of the chaos unfolding in Washington, we’re making Minnesota the best state for kids to grow up.

Revised and Extended: What's Happening Inside the NIH and NSF

This article--on the systematic dismantling of the NIH, NSF, and CDC--is a must-read not only for researchers and clinicians but for anyone who has ever gotten a vaccine, taken medication, read the results of a research study, or gotten tested for Covid, flu, or STIs.
www.science.org/content/blog...

List includes “political”, “socioeconomic” and “historical”.

High-key, some of the street-level bureaucrats that I see being the bravest and putting up the most resistance to this administration right now are teachers. They are on the frontlines, working with some of our most vulnerable folks in society, and are not batting an eye at noncompliance.

(ii) a clear examination of how the United States has admirably grown closer to its noble principles throughout its history;
(iii) the concept that commitment to America’s aspirations is beneficial and justified;
(iv) the concept that celebration of America’s greatness and history is proper

deeply concerning for civics, broadly construed:

(d) “Patriotic education” means a presentation of the history of America grounded in:
(i) an accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, and ennobling characterization of America’s founding and foundational principles;

Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling – The White House By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered: Section 1.  Purpose and

a truly dystopian vision of teaching and learning in a pluralist nation
www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

0.1% of our reps have had a baby while serving - so strange we have wildly inadequate pro-family policies

I am begging the national media to start taking this seriously.

Stop buying the claims that the framing of "temporary" or "pause."

They are altering the review processes of federally funded scientific research from merit-based peer review processes to political screening by ideologues.

stripping the public purposes of education from public education comes at you fast